AT THE GATE

Everyone’s got a job on the ground,
in the smoke, in the canyon, dancing
in the branding pen—syringes, taggers,
knives and irons—stepping ‘round
fat calves stretched one after another
before finding their mothers waiting
at the gate for children after school.

The smart and hard-to-gather
black white-faced cow looks
a little rough in your cell phone
photo, but after twenty-two years
she knows the routine—bringing
her last year’s calf you missed
to the corrals for weaning.